by Chris Strauss, USA TODAY Sports

by Chris Strauss, USA TODAY Sports

Prior to Super Bowl XIII, Dallas Cowboys linebacker Thomas "Hollywood" Henderson famously remarked that Terry Bradshaw was "so dumb he couldn't spell cat if you spotted him the 'c' and the 'a'."

Bradshaw's lengthy post-playing career tenure as a media personality has certainly helped to mitigate that perception over the years, but a remark he made during FOX's halftime show Sunday might have been one of the stupider things he's ever said.

Yukking it up with co-host Jimmy Johnson while showing a Reggie Bush touchdown run from the first half of the Dolphins-Colts game, Bradshaw commented that the Miami running back was "chasing that bucket of chicken that the wind was blowing the other day," leading to guffaws from Bradshaw and Johnson and an awkward groan from co-host Curt Menefee.

I have no idea what Bradshaw was even talking about when he referred to a "bucket of chicken the wind was blowing." It makes no sense. But I do know that referring to an African-American athlete chasing a bucket of chicken certainly makes enough of a connection to a historically negative racial stereotype that Bradshaw should have used an entirely different analogy. I mean.....ANY other analogy.

It's not my place to decipher what Bradshaw meant by the comment and if there was any sort of racial animus intended. My guess is that it was likely the sort of goofy Southern colloquialism Bradshaw routinely spouts without anyone giving a second thought. He's like the ex-jock version of Kenneth from "30 Rock."

The fact that something so mindnumbingly stupid came out of Bradshaw's mouth on an NFL studio show shouldn't be all that surprising. In an attempt to add levity to the yukfest that is FOX NFL Sunday, Bradshaw was trying to quickly goof his way through the clip, likely not giving a second of thought to any deeper meaning of his verbal diarrhea.

While this happened during the halftime show, it's a syndrome that writer Will Leitch touched upon in a Sports on Earth piece that called the pregame show (and those of its ilk) "a program in which absolutely nothing happens."

"No one expects NFL pregame shows to feature some Socratic debate about the moral equivalency of violence, or even to name an actual football play, but even by the low standards of the genre, they're shockingly vacuous," Leitch wrote. "Sometimes I wonder if they're just some social experiment to see what happens when you put six former football players in a room and tell them to ad-lib."

"They are not sports; they are the worst part of sports, the piffle and flat empty air that we're all constantly trying to wade through to get to the actual sports."

Except in this instance, the flat empty air happened to get weighed down by a verbal lead balloon.